On Monday night, the Senate confirmed Vivek Murthy as U.S. Surgeon General. His was just one of two dozen nominations that Republicans had hoped to avoid confirming by running out the clock on Congress’s lame duck session.
That hope was destroyed by Republicans’ parliamentary fumble last weekend and by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s determination to ram them through. The fumble drew substantial attention over the weekend, but the nominees themselves, and the reasons they are controversial, have gone largely unremarked upon.
For all the accusations of obstructionism, Republicans have agreed to and confirmed much more important Obama nominees than these.
Murthy’s nomination originally came under fire from the National Rifle Association, and Democrats were scared to vote on him before the election because it might have hurt some of their incumbents. The doctor, who co-founded the pro-Obama political group Doctors for America, had advocated publicly for gun control as a public health measure.
Aside from that objection, former Surgeon General Richard Carmona (who was himself a Democratic Senate candidate in 2012) wrote in these pages earlier this year that Murthy was inexperienced and a poor choice for the job. “[A]t just 36 years of age,” Carmona wrote, “Murthy is only a few years out of his residency and has very limited public health education and experience. I believe he is unqualified to effectively serve as the nation’s doctor….[T]o put him in this position so early in his career would only serve to weaken the position — and could doom Murthy to failure.”
Another of the controversial nominees is Tony Blinken, a deputy national security adviser whom Obama tapped to serve as Deputy Secretary of State. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has called him “totally unqualified” for the job. McCain complained that in 2012, Blinken had been part of the chorus attempting to downplay completely justifiable (and as it turns out, completely justified) fears about what would happen to Iraq without an American military presence. Blinken had said that the U.S. was leaving that country “less violent, more democratic and more prosperous…and the United States more deeply engaged there than any time in recent history.”
The first two statements in that quotation seem risible now in hindsight, but the third statement was already demonstrably untrue when Blinken said it. As several officials, including former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has since written, Obama had largely disengaged from Iraq — even mentally, let alone in terms of communicating with its leaders — before withdrawal was completed. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has also complained that Blinken refused to answer his question on U.S.-Cuba policy straightforwardly.
Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and David Vitter, R-La., took to the floor Monday night to speak out against Sarah Saldaña, who is slated to become the new director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In her written testimony this month, Saldaña wrote that she supported Obama’s recently announced immigration executive action. Republicans, having vowed to prevent it by denying it funds when the new Congress begins, would prefer not to confirm someone who believes the president can unilaterally give work papers to several million people illegally present in the country. As Vitter put it, her confirmation would suggest congressional approval of something that is “completely beyond the president’s constitutional authority.”
As with the recent confirmation of two grossly unqualified ambassadorial nominees, Reid ensured that even Obama’s worst nominees could be confirmed when he shattered long-standing Senate precedent by invoking the so-called “nuclear option” last year. The Reid era of the Senate is nearly over now. The damage he has inflicted on the institution, however, remains evident. These confirmations guarantee that its effects will be felt for years to come.
